of a bird,
A snow-white bird, that from a cloud
Dropp’d down,
And among the branches brown
Sat singing
So sweet, and clear, and loud,
It seem’d a thousand harp-strings ringing.
And the Monk Felix closed his book,
And long, long
With rapturous look
He listen’d to the song,
And hardly breathed or stirr’d.”
As he thus listened years rolled by, and on return to the convent he found all changed new faces in the refectory and in the choir.
Then the monastery roll was brought forth, wherein were written the names of all who had belonged to that house of prayer, and therein it was found—
“That on a certain day and date,
One thousand years before,
Had gone forth from the convent gate
The Monk Felix, and never more
Had enter’d that sacred door:
He had been counted among the dead.
And they knew at last,
That, such had been the power
Of that celestial and immortal song,
A thousand years had pass’d,
And had not seem’d so long
As a single hour.”
